Now things are getting interesting. Kim wants to test an ICBM on a path to Guam, but he's signaling it's just a test - an act of aggression he thinks he can get away with because he's announced it.

Trump is saying "don't think about it" or he may take it as the act of aggression he needs to do something about Kim.

Chy-na said yesterday if Kim acts first they will stay neutral but will otherwise protect Kim.

Tillerson and the Chinese have already discussed the US interpretation of an ICBM launched at Guam and how they are unable to verify whether or not it contains a warhead, let alone whether or not that in and of itself is to be considered a first strike.

"Locked and loaded" tells Kim that Trump and Mattis already know what they will do if that ICBM is launched. They know the time to take out Kim is now, not five or ten years from now.

But Kim's not one to back down, although he's getting enormous pressure from the Chinese to do so. I wonder what they're offering if he does?

Well, clearly the actions of the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations re NK over the past 24 years failed miserably to keep them from expanding their arsenal. More of the same will probably lead to NK eventually using the weapons, and more likely to selling nuclear weapon technology and material to other entities that will definitely use them. (They are already doing that with Iran.)

This reminds me of two teens yelling "You want to go?" at each other in the locker room.

I think Trump was trying to be very clear yesterday that he was very ready to go. Locked and loaded doesn't mean, "if you force me to, I will". I means, "pointed right at you and just waiting to pull the trigger".

I don't know how Trump benefits from having an ICBM launched at Guam and nagging Chy-na yet again to "do something". That's hardly the statement you want to make in a world full of enemies.

-- It is more what they're trying to explain will happen if he doesn't. If he launches a missile at Guam, even a "test missile," a lot of innocent South and North Koreans are going to die when he lashes out at South Korea when America and Japan finally put their feet down.

"Well, clearly the actions of the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations re NK over the past 24 years failed miserably to keep them from expanding their arsenal."

-- Clinton and Bush may not have been perfect, but you're seeing a reaction to the Obama era policies. He bought peace in his time with Iran, and gave Russia flexibility after he won the election. And this is the first example of that coming back to bite us.

"Clinton and Bush may not have been perfect"Clinton's approach is what led to this. You could maybe make a case for Bush wanting to give NK enough time to prove they weren't going to change their ways, but it was pretty clear that they weren't going to, so Bush should have done more. By Obama's election, no way could you argue that Kim needed more time. But Obama knew that the shit wouldn't hit the fan during his admin, so he didn't care.

Query: If North Korea uses the Chinese supplied and enabled ICBM's with Chinese H-Bomb Warheads to flood the defenses of the USA so that only 10 of 50 launched get through and eliminate 90% the USA as a military power and a wealth producer, will that be the time to attack . And if so, which country, China or its puppet state.

The Clinton Admin. solved the Nork nuke problem in '94, ARM. There was an agreement! Everyone signed, everyone smiled, everyone got their picture took.Sure the Norks violated that agreement, and subsequent agreements, from day 1, but the important thing is that those agreements happened. Intentions, my dear boy, intentions!

The sanctions the Trump Admin just got the UN to agree to (including China!) are the toughest yet. For some reason the master negotiators and highly-respected diplomats in the last administration couldn't get that done at any time during the last 8 years...

I admitted that Bush could have done better. However, I think Obama's relatively free hand in foreign affairs emboldened North Korea, especially the failure to follow through with the Red Line in Syria, giving Russia flexibility and Iran money, wasn't a more obvious launching point for the problem.

There's blame to share, but I think that the closer you get to now, the more there is.

Strategically the hot-war question is whether we can use Japan to stage attacks or not.If Japan kicks us out (so as not to invite attacks against Japanese soil) then we're going to have a tough time. Non-nuclear, you understand. B1s and B2s can make it from Guam to most of the interesting sites in NKorea easily but that's at least two refuelings for most fighters and you'll have pretty limited loiter time. Suppressing mobile anti-air, especially if it's modern and run by well-trained troops, isn't a cakewalk. I'm not sure what the Norks' ability to mine their littoral zone is, but that's a threat if they have the capability. I think we can handle the Nork diesel-electric subs but they only have to get lucky once to make parking a ton of big ships off the coast a bad idea.

Anyway if we can fly sorties from Japan we can reduce the Nork's ability to threaten outside of their border pretty quickly. If we can't base in Japan it would take a very long time to do that.

I really don't have a read on how China would act, and I guess that's a pretty big factor in all of this, too.

The North Korean nuclear program can roughly be divided into four phases. Phase I (1956–80) dealt primarily with training and gaining basic knowledge. Phase II (1980–94) covers the growth and eventual suspension of North Korea's domestic plutonium production program. Phase III (1994–2002) covers the period of the "freeze" on North Korea's plutonium program (though North Korea pursued uranium enrichment in secret)[1] and Phase IV (2002–present) covers the current period of renewed nuclear activities.[2]

AReasonableMan said...The actual bombs were built while Bush Jr was president, this is a fact that is not in dispute.

But they couldn't have been, ARM! The Nork's nuke program was stopped by the valiant diplomacy of the Clinton Administration. Since they didn't have a research and manufacture doing that time they couldn't have created the materials and gained the years of expertise needed to build "the actual bombs" later. See? It's just not possible.

"The actual bombs were built while Bush Jr was president, this is a fact that is not in dispute."

-- Which has what to do with the fact that Clinton's failed agreement lead to their being built, and Obama's foreign policy allowed North Korea to reach the point that they're pointing missiles at Guam?

Also, the first versions of the North Korean Hwasongs were built in 1984. I think it is disingenuous to pretend that it was during Bush Jr's time that North Korea built them. They've been working on these missiles for literally over a generation. Also, in 2016, you know, during Obama's term, North Korea was bragging about newly developed submarine-based missiles. In 1999, North Korea agreed to a moratorium on missile tests, which they extended in 2002-2003. In fact, if you look at Wikipedia's list of tests, the 2000-2008 period is relatively benign compared to what came before and after it.

So the "they were built under Bush Jr!" is a deliberate smokescreen that ignores both how long this has been a problem and the depth of the problem (submarine puns are funny.) It also ignores a lot of the context around the challenges at the time, compared with the spike in testing around 2012.

Again, Bush Jr. could have done more, but it is facile to try and dismiss it with "they built it under Bush!"

I was looking for how much the US had recently helped N Korea with their nuke 'n' missile programs, found this instead:

"The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been receiving food assistance from the United Nations and other countries and organizations for 20 years."..."Between 1995 and 2005 Seoul provided nearly $1.2 billion in food and fertilizer alone [to N. Korea]. The ROK often linked its assistance to North Korean participation in talks, though with little substantive result. Seoul cut off general support after Pyongyang’s military attacks in 2010: aid fell from about a peak of about $400 million in 2007 to a low of around $13 million in 2012."

[Including the part where several of the missiles tested were not, in fact, built under Bush, such as the novel submarine tests and the more recent tests that were iterative upgrades to the failed tests of the 2009/10s?]

ARM has convinced me: this is GWBush's fault.What punishment do we think is appropriate? Flogging? Crucifixion?Not just for GWBush, of course--it'd have to be for all of the high-level members of his administration.If we all just collectively agree that when bad things happen it's the fault of Republicans--and that Democrats bear no responsibility for all of the things they INTENDED to do, were praised for doing, but didn't actually do--then we as a country can finally progress.

"The bombs were built during the presidency of Bush Jr, why not just acknowledge reality rather than blow smoke?"

-- Except of course for the ones built after 2008, like the vast majority of the ones tested. Or the ones built before 2000. Did you even look at any of the timeline history of tests that show testing as early as the 1980s, with a moratorium lasting for most of Bush's first term?

What fatuous faggotry. How about "no sophisticated long-range missiles before Obama, sophisticated long-range missiles after Obama." Black and white. Or "no submarine-launch capability before Obama, submarine-launch capability after Obama." Black and white.

But why argue with someone determined to miss the point entirely? Easier just to say "yes, ARM, GWBush dropped the ball, he's to blame, it's those dirty Republicans who've screwed things up again--if not for them everything would have been fine!" and go about our day.

To be fair to all the previous concerned presidents, the problem seemed completely intractable, and still does. And I'm not saying that lets anyone off the hook, it's just the way it is. Trump better find a solution.

-- Hopefully everyone realizes that was a perfectly legitimate use of force and North Koreans non-crazy political and military class put an end to things before their hereditary dictator turns this into a bloodbath.

Sure, but what happens if the US tries to shoot down the missile and fails?

Granted a medium-range ICBM launched from a known static platform is probably the best-case scenario for our anti-missile systems so I like our odds...but there's some chance if we try to bring it down we'll fail. That would probably be worse than not trying!It's a tough spot.

China has just told Fat Boy, son you are on your own. China cannot afford to have the US cancel all commercial relations with it which is what would happen if any US soil was hit by NK. Nor does China want to provoke Japan and South Korea to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. China screws up bigly by allowing the North Koreans to get to big for their britches.

The situation bequeathed to Bush Jr was fundamentally different to that bequeathed by Bush Jr to Obama.

A preemptive strike against the Norks before 9 October 2006 could have only produced a conventional retaliation against Seoul. Bad, but probably not catastrophic. By the end of Bush Jr's presidency North Korea was a nuclear armed state. A preemptive strike from this point forward could and probably would have evoked a nuclear response, which would have been catastrophic for the South Koreans, if not everyone else. This a fundamental difference that I think even the dimmest bulb here can grasp. The Norks didn't need ICBMs to deliver a nuke to South Korea, they could have used a plane or boat or even a truck. They no doubt have agents in place throughout South Korea to facilitate such a local attack.

The two situations are not comparable, one is vastly more problematic than the other.

At no time did I use the term 'dirty', especially given that 'incompetent' is a perfectly adequate descriptor for the situation. I have no personal knowledge of the personal hygiene habits of Bush Jr and his cohort. I do know when North Korea developed a nuclear weapon.

AReasonalbeMan said...I do know when North Korea developed a nuclear weapon.

No, you're slipping!You mean to say "I do know when North Korea built a nuclear weapon" That way you can blame the incompetence of GWBush for that fact.North Korea DEVELOPED nuclear weapons for many years prior to the GWBush administration so you can't blame all the DEVELOPMENT on GWBush. People keep pointing out the failure of the Clinton Administration's widely-praised deal to stop North Korea's nuclear weapon DEVELOPMENT program/progress for exactly that reason, ARM.

Your thin reed is that some nuclear weapons--the first ones we know they successfully built--were built during the GWBush administration. Stick to that if you want to make what appears to be your only point (stupid as it is).

[Also the idea that ARM and his buddies would have supported a preemptive strike against North Korea is so laughably stupid it's barely worth mentioning. Sure, though: it was "incompetence" on the part of the GWBush admin to not use "unprovoked" military force to take out the Nork nuke program--especially at a time when the UN and even our allies would 100% have not supported such an action. Especially at a time when ARM and pals couldn't stop jumping up and down about how "Bush lied" when the intelligence on Iraqi WMDs was incorrect--he now wants you to believe that those same people would have backed cowboy Bush bombing North Korea (and thereby causing the deaths of tens of thousands) on the basis of...intelligence about WMDs! It's as though we can't remember how loudly the Left complained about even naming NKorea to the "axis of evil" back then--and those were just words!" But yeah, totally, ARM, you and your allies were right there behind GWBush urging him to bomb the shit out of NKorea to end their nuclear program--he was just too incompetent to pull the trigger. Plausible.]

Bush was president for six years before the Norks tested their first nuke. It is not that hard for a large state to build nukes, they could have taken a vacation for four years and still made the October 2016 deadline. In fact they probably only stepped up production once they realized what an incompetent fool Bush Jr was after he attacked Iraq and became bogged down in that quagmire so that he had limited resources to respond to anyone else.

The timeline tells a different story ARM. In 1999, NK agrees to a moratorium on nuclear testing, and stands by it until 2005, with several more failed tests through 2009. The 2005 tests were short-range missiles, and the successful 2006 test included I think one or two long-range missiles. It wasn't until 2009 that we had a follow-up test with nuclear yield.

Do you honestly believe they built that missile during Bush years and waited until 2009 to test it, or, more likely, were they continuing building/upgrades/tests under Obama?

An underappreciated part of all of this: Obama's SecState Hillary Clinton made it clear to leaders everywhere that giving up WMD programs and cooperating with the US was not enough to prevent the US from backing your ouster and killing. Remember Libya? "We came, he saw, he died!" Ha-ha-ha, right? Libya had voluntarily cooperated with the US to end their WMD programs. The brilliant Obama Admin plan to publicly support the Libyan leader's overthrown (and laugh about his summary execution) is all the proof any leader needs that in the choice between negotiating an end to a WMD program the US/West opposes and pursuing that program full force in order to use the WMDs as safety/bargaining chips, the only possible answer is full steam ahead.

A preemptive strike against the Norks before 9 October 2006 could have only produced a conventional retaliation against Seoul. Bad, but probably not catastrophic. By the end of Bush Jr's presidency North Korea was a nuclear armed state. A preemptive strike from this point forward could and probably would have evoked a nuclear response, which would have been catastrophic for the South Koreans, if not everyone else. This a fundamental difference that I think even the dimmest bulb here can grasp. The Norks didn't need ICBMs to deliver a nuke to South Korea, they could have used a plane or boat or even a truck. They no doubt have agents in place throughout South Korea to facilitate such a local attack.

I don't think the nuclear weapons have ever been intended for use against Korean targets. They have always been intended as a deterrent against foreign intervention once the Korean war resumes. You say that a conventional strike on Seoul would be "Bad" but probably not "catastrophic" -- by what measure? Imagine someone shelling Manhattan from Staten Island. Now suppose Manhattan has half the population of the country, and it's being shelled with 10,000 pieces of heavy artillery, short range missiles, etc. We're not talking the London Blitz. We're not even talking Dresden. There is literally no disaster in the history of Korea that could remotely compare with North Korea opening fire on Seoul with conventional weaponry. Together with the disruption of essential services, it would not be surprising to see a million fatalities. A nuclear device would only run the risk of rendering the ancient capital uninhabitable.

Now, nuclear weapons could be useful if the battle line advanced further, to the secondary capital being built at Sejong City. The North would probably be unable to move all their artillery forward (most of it probably having been destroyed in counterstrikes from the US), so a battlefield nuclear detonation could have a devastating effect on South Korea's remaining government organization. But realistically, the battle line would not advance past Seoul because North Korea would be utterly destroyed by the counterattack, whether they had nuclear weapons or not.

And nuclear weapons could be useful if they loaded it on a container ship or something, docked in LA or San Francisco, and threatened to detonate the device if their demands were not met. That's possible, but North Korean ships get intercepted all the time (we track all the ships that leave their ports), so that just doesn't seem like a reliable delivery mechanism. They'd get stopped on the open ocean well before they hit our ports. They'd have to run it through China, and I can't see the Chinese government letting that happen. I mean, you'd have to bribe a lot of people to get that to work, and there's too many opportunities for everything to go wrong once it leaves North Korea's direct control.

Anyhow, the nuclear deterrent was not complete without a missile delivery mechanism, because the point is to deter US intervention by threatening either Japan (hence all the missile launches into Japanese waters during the Bush II years) or the United States (hence the ICBM development completed during the Obama years). They don't need nukes to destroy South Korea. Seoul is within range of their guns. And that's why neither Bush II nor Obama ever actually did anything about the problem.

As far as bombing N. Korea goes, remember that many experts advocated the same thing against the Soviets and "Red Chinese." Patience prevailed. There was every reason to think after the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany that it was only a matter of time before N. Korean leadership came to its senses or there was an Eastern-Europe style popular overthrow. It could still happen. Patience.

There's no doubt the situation got progressively worse through each presidency. Each president no doubt saw they were leaving a situation that would only worsen to their successor. That was true of Clinton, that was true of Bush, that was true of Obama. Now we can hardly imagine what the situation will be as it is inherited from Trump. Or even if there's anyone left to inherit it.

I'm not necessarily blaming any of these former presidents. A military solution under Clinton or Bush - who knows what that would have led to? While NK didn't have ICBMs they probably had tactical nukes for at least part of that time, and even if they didn't, there is China...

Balfegor said...I don't think the nuclear weapons have ever been intended for use against Korean targets.

This is naive.

You say that a conventional strike on Seoul would be "Bad" but probably not "catastrophic" -- by what measure? Imagine someone shelling Manhattan from Staten Island. Now suppose Manhattan has half the population of the country, and it's being shelled with 10,000 pieces of heavy artillery, short range missiles, etc. We're not talking the London Blitz. We're not even talking Dresden. There is literally no disaster in the history of Korea that could remotely compare with North Korea opening fire on Seoul with conventional weaponry.

There has been push-back against this scenario. Specifically, South Korea and the US have had a long time to prepare for such an attack and would respond quickly and in a devastating manner if such an attack began. Not only would they quickly knockout much of the Norks artillery but the Norks would have to quickly reorient to protect their own military and civilian targets. During a counterattack, how how high a priority would it be to continue shelling Seoul, which is predominantly a civilian target?

I am not saying that there would be no damage done to Seoul but still much less than a nuclear attack would produce.

As far as bombing N. Korea goes, remember that many experts advocated the same thing against the Soviets and "Red Chinese." Patience prevailed. There was every reason to think after the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany that it was only a matter of time before N. Korean leadership came to its senses or there was an Eastern-Europe style popular overthrow. It could still happen. Patience.

I don't know what we should do, so glad it's not my call. I'd like to go with readering's comment but NK will probably be assisting even non-state actors to develop their nukes. And then even without NK's help, more states might feel if the US didn't or couldn't stop NK, why shouldn't we have them? This could be the line to draw for nuclear nonproliferation, except for the catastrophic consequences of failure.

If I were advising Trump to get China to act - announce a one-Korea policy and get NORK out of UN.

place nuclear missiles in SKorea and Taiwan to present China with a "cuban" Missile Crisis"

Removal to be negotiated. 8/11/17, 9:35 AM

Actually if Trump really anted to ratchet up the pressure oN China, announce that we are rethinking support of Japan going nuclear. That's the big boogeyman for China, since in WWII Japan killed somewhere between 15-20 million Chinese (roughly 3% their total population).

Also if Trump wanted to lay down a red line, let it be known that another nuclear test or missile test would be viewed as breaking the armistice and we will react accordingly. Again, remember that we are still at a legal state of war with North Korea that has only been paused by a cease-fire.

"Locked and loaded" was standard nomenclature when I was in Army Basic in 1969. We trained with the M-14; if you were going to Viet Nam (I wasn't, thanks be) you got to train with the M-16 in AIT. I assume but don't know that "locked and loaded" would apply to the M-16 and all subsequent versions. Anyway, it means ready to kill the target. Sounds good to me. I hope someone in NK can translate it for Fat Boy's benefit.

Don Vito, isn't it locked and loaded for some weapons, loaded and locked for others? I forget but the Enfield or the Mauser or something works the other way from the Springfield. Something like that. But yes, locked and loaded means ready to shoot, plus or minus the safety catch I guess.